Object obsession and sibling rivalry

Every phase of parenting has its challenges. In the first year, the biggest battle is sleep deprivation. In the toddler years, it’s mostly about emotional regulation and resistance. For me, right now, with an almost-3 and almost-5 year old, it’s fighting over physical objects. I am careful not to say “toys” here because my children will fight over nearly anything. Today we all lost our minds at the playground because there was so much emotion about a dirty, used sticker that my daughter had found buried in the woodchips. I used to think I could solve this problem by getting rid of all of the toys, but instead they started fighting over kitchen utensils, flashlights, and other random household objects. 

Why? This kind of behavior seems to be nearly universal among siblings in the West, but is it like this in other cultures? In my study of hunter-gatherer societies, there are numerous accounts of sibling rivalry. From an evolutionary perspective, sibling rivalry makes sense. When an older child is weaned from the breast in order to prepare for the arrival of a sibling, this is accompanied by intense tantruming. In the hunter gatherer context, breastfeeding is a matter of survival, and weaning represents a real survival risk. This is true even when children are spaced further apart (as they typically are in hunter gatherer societies) and when weaning is late (usually around the 3-year mark). When the sibling arrives, it’s not unusual for the older child to be ambivalent towards the baby, or even to try and “accidentally” harm them in little ways. Children often express violent feelings towards siblings in doll play or imaginary games, as documented by numerous ethnographers.

But what about conflict over physical objects? In hunter-gatherer society, there is essentially no such thing as private property. Members of the group may borrow and use any tool or object they need whenever they need it. Meat and gathered food is also shared equally, regardless of who was most successful and brought home the largest contribution. Sharing is so important in these cultures that children are encouraged to give spontaneous gifts to others as early as age 3, with no expectation of reciprocation. There are no plastic toys, of course, though children do fabricate dolls, balls, arrows and other objects to be used in play from mud, sticks and other natural resources. Do they fight over these? I don’t know. Certainly one of the features of the multi-age playgroup is that older children help to control the aggressive acts of younger children, who don’t yet have that level of self-control. That much is well-documented in the ethnographic accounts. 

What I haven’t found are any accounts of children fighting over a particularly prized mud doll or stick arrow. I suspect that there is an occasional kerfuffle over physical objects among children even in hunter-gatherer societies, but I suspect it is much less frequent. There are many reasons for this. First, the presence of older playmates and many older adults who help to regulate the aggressive behavior of younger children makes it less difficult than it is for a single caregiver in the Western context. Second, there are fewer toys and physical objects to fight over, and these objects are generally impermanent and less deserving of intense emotional attachment. I believe we inadvertently reinforce emotional attachment to toys and physical objects in Western culture through joint object play with our children when they are young, something that is virtually unheard of in any non-Western culture, and through toy-gifting culture during Christmas, birthdays, etc. Thirdly, and this is key, children model adult behavior. In Western society we all have intense attachment to physical objects. It might not even be a stretch to say that many of us organize our entire lives around the accumulation of valued physical objects and private property. Adults in our culture are not particularly good at sharing either. Our children see this and they imitate us. 

Is there a silver-bullet solution here? Unfortunately, I don’t think so, but one thing I am personally working on, for my own sake as well as my children’s, is being less materialistic. Easier said than done, I know, but when you think about how many hunter-gatherers lived happy, fulfilling lives with only as many things as they could carry on their backs, it certainly puts our relationship to “stuff” in perspective.